Friday, April 1, 2011

Character driven vs Plot driven writers

So I'm a few days late with my blogging. Honestly, that's because I promised a blog on a book I was reading and then got sidetracked and never really finished the book.

Every time I pick up a new book or a new tool for writers I think it might be my answer to getting off the midlist :). I've read the first two chapters of a lot of writing books and honestly, none of them really have anything new to say about plotting. They want you to discover the inner journey. Either using screen play writing techniques or The Heroes Journey, or yada yada. Truthfully, all that stuff is way over my head.

The thing I really do like about Jeff Gerke's stuff is that he's very open and real in his style of trying to teach a character driven writer to plot and vice versa. I was actually able to take away quite a few tips from his character side. The how to plot side (FOR ME) was same-o. What's the inner journey--how does it relate to the outer journey. All of that is great IF you can somehow articulate that inner and outer journey. Which I can't. I try. Really, I do and it's noone's fault that I can't. I have to discover it along the way. SIGH Sometimes I wish I were more analytical. Or I wish I had someone who really understands plotting and is also a good teacher to hold my hand through the plotting process of ONE book. SIGH. That's just not going to happen. I'm sure Jodi Picoult is way too busy :)

Having said the PLOT side of the book didn't really help me, I am going to be really honest and admit that there is a certain amount of understanding about my character that really clicked for me while reading the first half of the book and working through Jeff's character charts so if for no more than the first half of the book, it's well worth the change it costs to pick it up. Even for someone with mad characterization skills, like me (ha! no really, I do have mad characterization skills--the therapy must be helping, I could never have given myself a compliment six months ago)

What I found was that while discovering my character using the method Jeff suggests, I discovered some things that helped me write out some inner journey stuff which naturally spilled over into plot. So for that alone...I'm highly recommending Jeff Gerke's Plot vs Character. Honestly, I am very anti writing books because I have such a hard time implementing the information, but this one did help me more than any other book ever has. And that's saying a lot!